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Your Ovulation Testing Questions Answered

I have had quite a few questions lately concerning ovulating testing with ovulation kits. The following questions sum up what many women are wondering. I hope the answers to these questions will help you too.

Question – I’ve been using ovulation kits starting this past Monday. The ovulation test came up with 2 lines, but one was very faint. On Tuesday I did another test, and it came up positive, but I had no discharge, so I decided to wait for clear, stretchy discharge.

Sure enough, on Wednesday I had A LOT of discharge, but then it dried up and my test came up negative. I decided to try for pregnancy anyway, but am a little worried that I may have missed it because of test results. So confused. What does this mean???

Answer – It’s best to start testing with the ovulation kits on around day 10 of your cycle (depending on your cycle length) with day 1 being the first day of menstrual bleeding. With ovulation test strips, both lines need to be about the same darkness for the test to be positive. This is different than pregnancy tests, with only a slight second line making it a positive result.

With ovulation kits, there is a control line that is always there and there is the test line that shows up when the LH surge is increasing. You need to wait until the test line is as dark or darker than the control line before considering it a positive. Once this happens, you should stop using the tests. Ovulation is supposed to occur within 12-36 hours of this positive.

Using these tests along with basal body temperature (BBT) charting will help you determine if you have, in fact, already ovulated or not. Simply looking at the consistency of your cervical fluid is not an indicator in itself that you already ovulated.

Question – I am on month 5 of trying to get pregnant. This is the first month I have tried the ovulation testers to test ovulation. My periods have remained regular since coming off the pill. I have a 26-day cycle, and I started the ovulation predictor kit on the day the kit told me to start tracking and I still haven’t ovulated.

Its Aug 2nd, and my period is due on the 14th of the month. How close to my next period can I ovulate? Should I keep testing or just start all over again after this period?

Answer – This really depends on how regular your cycles are. If you have been tracking consistently for the past 5 months, and you always have a 26-day cycle, then you can be pretty sure that this month will be the same.

You didn’t say whether or not you have been tracking your basal temperature each month. This is a better indicator of when you ovulate each month. Some times certain factors can alter your OPK test results – such as drinking too much water, taking medications, and not taking the test around the same time each day.

So what do you do?

Make sure to NOT test first thing in the morning. A woman’s LH will typically surge in the morning, but this surge will not show up for a few hours. The best time to check is between 12 noon and 8 pm each day, but it’s important to check around the same time each day.

Don’t test after drinking a large amount of water, as your urine will tend to be diluted. If your urine is diluted, you may get a negative result when in fact the result should be positive.

You may ask, “Well, how do I know if I’ve drunk too much water?” If your urine is very pale yellow or clear when you urinate, your urine is probably too diluted. It’s best to not drink anything at all for a couple hours before testing.

If you are on medications, especially hormonal medications for fertility, check with your doctor first to make sure one of the ovulation kits would show accurate readings for you.